Neutrals and Neutrality
 

I'm currently patrolling off the southwestern tip of the UK, and I'm seeing a LOT of US cargo ships and tankers, obviously heading for British ports. They're neutral, obviously, because it's Oct '39 in my current campaign, but they're also obviously supplying the enemy. I assume that isn't enough excuse to sink em? :arrgh!:

In my opinion they are neutral ONLY IF they are supplying cargo to BOTH the enemy and you.

Sink em!

If you do sink a neutral, you will take a renown hit which could end your career.

Oops! I forgot about the punishment for such behavior. :D

Unless you adjust the renown rates for Neutrals so they either give no renown, or a little renown, of course.

That's what I do, since once the war started to get into full swing, in many cases neutral ships that were supplying the enemy are considered valid targets.

I have to keep telling myself that my captain wouldn't know what I do. That the US joined the war later.
If I start declaring war on the largest military force on the planet for the sake of a ship load of stockings or bananas, I don't think my superiors would thank me for it.
But that's just me.
Edit your renown files and sink em if you like, they deserve it.

Don't worry, I still don't blow up US ships until they join the war, but others? They're proving they are enemies of the Reich by supplying our enemies!

I edit my files to remove the renown penalty, but the only neutrals I target are inside British convoys. Even then, I target the fattest targets if possible. If a small neutral is in the convoy I ignore it for the larger vessels, but if the biggest target is a neutral, he's not getting away with it. Besides, are we really expected to ascertain the flags on vessels in convoys? What if our ladder pattern torpedoes sink a neutral in a convoy. The whole idea of neutral vessels in a convoy expecting to be untouched is plain silly.

Machen alles kaput!

I moved the renown to neutral, so if I sink a ship that a neutral in a convoy, or didn't have their lights on, well, war is hell, a "innocent" ship is sunk, and I have wasted a torpedo.

(just realized that that was on my old install, thought my renown was funky. Anyone remember the file you edit to change the renown rewards? :hmmm: )

I believe it's in the basic.cfg, near the top.

Look for

[RENOWN]
RenownReachGridObjCompleted=500
RenownPatrolGridObjCompleted=200
CompletedPatrol=0
NEUTRAL=-1
ALLIED=1
AXIS=-10
WrongShipSunk=-5000
FirstRankRenown=100
SecondRankRenown=350
EndCampaign=-5000

Change the value for NEUTRAL. I guess if you changed it to zero you'd neither gain nor lose renown if you sank a neutral vessel. Better wait for an older hand to confirm, though, I've not tinkered with this myself. :DL

SH3 does a good jon of duplicating the frustration many Kaleuns must have felt. It is not only neutrals (Americans) breaking the rules, but seeing the many ships left floating carry on to their destination.

Exactly right. I changed Neutral to 0, because I don't sink neutrals ever, but if one gets accidentally hit in a convoy they didn't make any noise about it.

I also changed AXIS to -1, since there were several Axis ships accidentally sunk by u-boats, and in every case the target ship was found to be outside the prescribed areas of operation and/or disguised as an Allied merchant. I figure a small renown hit is fair, but not the huge one they give.

Food for thought.

I've considered changing NEUTRAL to 0 but, since I'm using the Contacts Colour Mod, figured I'd wait and see if I ever want so much realism that I remove it. Otherwise it seems unlikely that I'd hit a neutral by mistake, although the point about hitting one in an enemy convoy by accident is well taken.

Never had considered tinkering with the value for AXIS but you make a good argument for it. It's not like anyone's likely to go around looking for Axis ships to sink so even in-game it would always be accidental and the RL penalties for it certainly took that into consideration.

Didn't one of the fluff radio messages state that it was okay to attack neutrals if they are escorted by enemy warships? If so, that validates any editing on the renown settings for those occasions.

For humor sake, I was tempted one time to see how many eels it would take to sink the Hipper, but it was a too good looking of a ship to sink....

(As a aside, the Admiral Hipper is one of the best looking ships of its era, at least to me)